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Saturday, November 27, 2010

What a glorious way to close out Thanksgiving break - IU beat Purdue in overtime in West Lafayette to bring the Old Oaken Bucket back to Bloomington!!! After humbly enduring 4 hours of trash talk from Boilermaker fans, justice has been served. I noticed all the Boilermakers were suddenly out of insults when the game ended ;) I am going to thoroughly enjoy making fun of Purdue for the next year.

Thank you Bill Lynch (though you'll still probably get fired) and thank you to my Indiana Hoooooooosiers! BTFD :)

Sunday, November 21, 2010

A day without laughter is a day wasted

I'm back home for a glorious 7 days of rest & relaxation before the icore case drops and the Kelley school owns me. My team has 10 days to analyze an 80 page case, solve all the problems, and come up with a solution which we'll turn into a 100-120 paper. It's a rite of passage for b-schoolers and it's going to be positively awful...but I digress. This is the first time I've been home since I moved out in August. It's also the first time I've been home since my one of my best friends entered the convent. Alexa joined the Sisters of St. Francis of Perpetual Adoration on September 5th.

Alexa and I were pretty much inseparable. When I was at IU we would skype a few times a week, even if we just did our homework "together." During the summer we spent 10 days on a pilgrimage in Italy and we met most mornings for daily Mass and then would spend the rest of the day together. We took several road trips and spent the whole summer in a fit of unending church giggles :) Alright you get the point...Alexa and I were inseparable and I am so thankful for all the time we spent together laughing, praying, creeping on nuns (we can spy a habit from a mile away!!), and loving life. I'm even thankful that she dragged me to the adoration chapel on Thursdays from 1-3am :) No matter how much I wanted to keep sleeping she knew how much I needed that time with Jesus and how much that time we spent united in the Eucharist deepened our relationship.

St. Peter's Square, the Vatican

I realize soon all of my friends will be gone from Kokomo and my heart won't really be here anymore (besides my family of course), but it was sad when it dawned on me today that Alexa doesn't live here anymore. I've only been home for about 48 hours and twice I've made plans with our friends and thought to myself, "oh I'll tell Alexa, she'll want to come too! I haven't seen her in three months!" But by the time I pull out my phone, I realize I can't text her. Missing her seems to strike me at the most random times and then I get all weepy. Detaching myself from her has been more of a struggle than I imagined. Though we cannot be together physically, we see each other in the Eucharist at Adoration and at Mass when we receive communion.

"I will meet you at the table. I will meet you in His heart. In the company of angels, in the place where all things start. We receive each other's presence, we are all made one in Him. Though I cannot see your face I will see you in the Eucharist." - Danielle Rose lyrics

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Today is the feast day of St. Elizabeth of Hungary - my patroness! Elizabeth was born a princess in Hungary in 1207, the daughter of King Alexander II. When she was 13 she married Louis of Thuringia. Despite her position in the court, Elizabeth and her husband led a virtuous life and Elizabeth especially devoted herself to works of charity. Elizabeth and Louis had 3 children when Louis was killed - she was only 20 years old (my age!). Elizabeth left the royal court, made arrangements for her children to be taken care of, and renounced the world to become a tertiary (third order member) of St. Francis. She built a hospital and devoted herself to the care of the sick until her death in 1231 at the age of 24.

Holiness obviously ran in the family because St. Hedwig was her aunt and St. Elizabeth of Portugual was her great-niece! Elizabeth of Hungary is often depicted with bread and roses because one day as she was secretly on an errand of mercy the bread she was trying to conceal was suddenly turned into roses.

I pray that we, like St. Elizabeth, may be devoted to serving the poor and that we may desire a life of poverty and detachment from the world. I'd also like to note that I find it awesome that my name is Elizabeth and I'm moving to Hungary :)

Sunday, November 14, 2010

I've found something that is more frustrating than registering for classes with 35,000 other students at IU...registering for classes on a Hungarian website!! I knew I was in for it when the directions began with "click on the round coat of arms with the bird in the middle in the upper right corner and the word Neptun will pop up in the third row." Toto, we're not in Indiana anymore :)

I met with my study abroad advisor here and figured out exactly which classes at Corvinus to take and which IU credits they would transfer back as. Of course none of those classes are showing up online. At IU the classes literally fill up within seconds on your registration time going live, so I'm hoping that's not the case at Corvinus. To add to the insult, the Corvinus registration system kicks out you every ten minutes if you don't navigate to a different part of the page. It also didn't occur to me that the days of the week don't have the same letters...ignorant American right here. I used my google-fu to figure out that K denotes Tuesday classes (kedd) and and H denotes Monday (hétfő). My favorite is Saturday...szombat! ZOMBIE BAT!

I emailed Gitta, my advisor in Budapest. It's 1:45am in Budapest right now, so hopefully tomorrow I'll wake up to an email telling me what to do. I hope this isn't indicative of how frustrating the whole semester is going to be!

Friday, November 12, 2010

Meryl Streep (love her!!!!) and Jane Pauley had a causal Q&A style conversation tonight at IU. The auditorium was sold out, mainly with ladies 55 and up haha :) Meryl was captivating - she was warm, smart, and very funny. I didn't have very good seats, but I knew where her town car was waiting so afterwards I walked (or maybe ran...) around to the side exit and waited for her to come out. Yes, Meryl Streep walked right past me and smiled and I have photographic evidence.

Well, I'm off to study for tomorrow's final exam have a Meryl movie marathon. Ciao!

Thursday, November 4, 2010

After the most challenging semester of my collegiate experience so far (i-core + internship interviews) I'll be moving abroad to study in Budapest, Hungary, for the spring 2011 semester!! I arrive in Hungary January 27th and will return at the end of May. I'll be attending Corvinus University in Budapest, via an exchange program with the Kelley School of Business here at IU. I plan on using this blog to keep you all updated on my adventures in Budapest and throughout Europe :)

I had a hard time deciding whether to study in Budapest or Hong Kong. I went back and forth for several months and even made an Excel spreadsheet analyzing the costs & benefits of each program (b-school nerd right here!). But in the end, Budapest seemed to choose me. I went on a pilgrimage to Italy last summer and our priests celebrated Mass at St. Peter's Basilica in the Hungarian Chapel of Our Lady. I remember thinking, "Hungary? Who goes to Hungary?" In August I was reminded that one of my patron saints is St. Elizabeth of Hungary. God kept sending me other little hints. For example, I was at a friend's house and we watched a documentary about the persecution of religious orders in central/eastern Europe during the Cold War. Several nuns from Budapest were featured in the documentary.